When Joseph Caputo Jr., 96, was growing up in Springfield, he enjoyed building model airplanes; years later he landed in a World War II hitch in the Army/Air Force working with communications systems.

Though he worked for a few months after the war as an air traffic controller at what is now Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee, Caputo made his living as an electrician.

And a few years ago his interest in model planes again took off, and he is now working on a kit for a C-47, made of balsa wood and paper -- his second project since resuming the hobby. It has a wingspan of about three feet, and he is not in a hurry to finish it, even though he has been working on it "on and off" for about six months.

Caputo, a widower and father of five, has a keen interest in planes, and he plans to go to the next Great New England Air Show at Westover, which is scheduled for July 14-15. The U.S. Air Force's demonstration team, the Thunderbirds, is the headline act, and there will be several other military and civilian acts.

He's been to at least a half dozen air shows -- including one in California -- and he especially appreciates the pilots' ability to maneuver the planes. "These guys have hours and hours of training," he said.

Caputo was honorably discharged from the military in 1946, having served States side for more than three years. The year before he had been certified to be an air- traffic control-tower operator.

He recalls working at Westover when a plane would take off every 15 seconds during the day, headed to Europe with food and supplies for rebuilding after the war as part of the Marshall Plan.

Officially called the European Recovery Program, this was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, to which the United States gave more than $13 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II.

And it was because of World War II that the Westover base was built. The plans for it were made as a result of the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Westover Field was created by a war-readiness appropriation signed that year by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; it opened in 1940 and was assigned to the United States Army Corps Northeast Air District. During the course of the war, it became the largest military air facility in the Northeast.

Westover was a base for anti-submarine operations against German U-Boats in the early years of World War II, and it served as a bomber-training base and port of embarkation/debarkation during that war.

Besides attending air shows at Westover and making model planes, Caputo exercises regularly. Before breakfast he draws his legs to his chest 30 times while lying in bed and does six leg lifts with each leg, 10 standing waist twists and six knee bends.

"He keeps active both physically and mentally," Carreira said, adding that he has inspired her to ride a stationary bike every day, something he used to do and row a rowing machine when she was growing up 50 years ago.

"The body is a wonderful machine. All you have to do is take care of it," Caputo said.